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Saturday, February 13, 2016

Nick went off to a friend's birthday celebration. He won't be home until 9:00-ish. Yesterday, he met another friend at a park he had to drive to. He took his bike with him as the friend was riding his own and they planned on doing a little mountain biking. He took a jump, landed it but then hit a rut/hole and went end over end. We didn't know about that until he drove home and hobbled up the stairs to my Creation Station and said he needed to be bandaged up. Dust was all over his clothes, the heels of the palms of both hands had ragged bare spots, a knee had a small scrape but his right arm had a good sized oozing scrape. He told me he cleaned them all up the best he could in the park restroom with soap and water to remove the sand, dirt and grit. He didn't hit his head but said the wind had been knocked out of him and when he finally caught his breath and attempted to stand felt like he was going to faint. At home he was also complaining about finding it hard to take in very deep breaths though there were no marks on his back or abdomen, only some road rash on his right side above his hip. A couple hours later we decided it couldn't hurt to go ahead and get an xray to make sure nothing was broken or punctured. All was good, nothing broken. He's just very sore and tender right now.

right palm

right arm - it looks worse in person and takes a 2" x 4" bandage to cover it

above hip

knee

None of these really look that bad, and they'll all heal up pretty quickly. We're keeping bandages on the one on the arm as it's still oozy, and it stings when it isn't covered. When he's typing or writing, that area hits the desktop too, so another good reason to keep it covered for awhile.As I mentioned at WoT, Marty now works from home. I had planned to discuss how to rearrange so that neither of us are bothering the other during his work-day and he brought it up himself earlier today. He and I work and think totally opposite - often a problem. His way of thinking was to just charge in like a bull in a china shop and start shuffling things around without a real plan. In his mind of course, he had a little bit of a plan.

My way of thinking would be to recognize what needed to be moved and how best to rearrange existing items in the room for everything to fit and function well. I would have drawn out a to-scale plan for that fit and layout. This while recognizing that neither area, nor furnishings in them had been cleaned in eons, along with whole lot of clutter that hadn't been dealt with for a very long time. I would have dealt with those issues first. Consideration had to be made for how the background and lighting for those times he'd be on video-conference calls too. While he was beginning to put his plan in action, and I was still trying to warm up to the whole idea of doing any of this today, and was dragging my feet wanting to do nothing but hang at the computer while I contemplated it. Well, I finally felt I had to get off my duff and supervise (we have very different ways of cleaning too, and left to him - cleaning would be minimal). Supervising meant grabbing the vacuum before too much dust started flying. The brush attachment tackled the layer of dust sitting atop the furnishings and the vacuum tackled the floor with the help of the crevice tool. Oh my there was a lot of dust and cat hair when some things were moved!! A few cobwebs too! The room as a whole is far from finished, but at least that little corner is clean and now houses his desk and computer. It'll be a progression as he adds the small stuff.

Marty's work area.

He will be getting an additional monitor and keyboard from his employer. He needs to use the task light. We both forgot that the overhead lights stopped working a long time ago. Previous owners had installed two can lights in the ceiling directly above the head of where the bed would go. We moved the bed and its orientation as well. I would have liked to have this room painted before all this - hasn't been done since prior to 1992 - but Marty wasn't about to do that any time soon or wait for it to happen by me. He'd wait a long time.

This is the other corner to the right. That's my Sears Kenmore cabinet machine doing double solo duty as a nightstand. Marty uses a C-Pap so that's the clunky machine there. Nothing else will get photographed in that room at this point. So much to sort through and get rid of. I have boxes of clothes that I've thought "I can wear those again when I lose...", well, we know how that goes, so it's probably time to get rid of them. By this time, someone's bound to call them "retro" hehe. Marty & I both have boxes of stuff to sort through. We haven't decided if we're doing anything tonight for Valentine's day. My stomach has been giving me issues since Thursday night, so I'm trying to be careful about foods. I don't want to go to the doctor, but the first couple days nearly did. I'm thinking possible ulcer, but don't want to deal with the testing...not until I have the insurance cards in hand! Marty asking what I might be able to eat, so I guess I'd better start thinking about that.

Monday, February 8, 2016

Yesterday it began warming up out here. We reached a high of 81 on our outdoor thermometer. It's supposed to be in the low to mid-80s for the next eight days. This is February, the middle of winter, and I want winter back, thank you very much.

I have one in bloom in each of two separate pots.

The bulbs came from my mom's in the year or two prior to her death, but I haven't paid much attention to them so I'm only getting a few. I'm surprised there are still any left that the squirrels haven't devoured.

Fruitless pear blossom

With the neighbor's ivy, which I detest, as a backdrop, the blossoms on the fruitless pear are emerging. I mentioned in last Sunday's post that they'd be along shortly.

Fruitless pear leaves.

The leaves are getting larger, and display nicely against the deep blue sky.

weeds

Weeds are beginning to proliferate. Not much else will grow well in this sandy soil. It needs a lot of amendments, but there's no room to add good soil without removing a lot of the old soil.

I see tomorrow is Tuesday - I don't have any "back-up" items to use for the toaster oven post, so may have to make something and post late in the day...or next week.

Nick came home at noon on Thursday complaining of feeling ill. He had a fever, and over the next couple days it stayed below 102. He didn't want to be disruptive to his classes as he was still coughing and sneezing today so stayed home again, but will be going back to school tomorrow. Marty has also been sick. I didn't realize he'd recently had a mild cold, which always goes into his chest and for the last several days he's been feeling pretty crummy and coughing a lot, and is tired still today. He starts his new job tomorrow, so I hope he can pull it off.

I've hibernated in my Creation Station this week, emerging only to fix meals, and meet with friends a couple times. Today I went downstairs and spent the better part of the day doing chores.I managed three loads of laundry, and half of one that had been sitting in the dryer for a week. Everything is now either hanging on the racks in the garage (laundry area) or folded and sitting on the table waiting to be put away. I paid some bills, cleaned the cat box, finished loading the dishwasher and ran it, tried to take a late nap but was interrupted by a call from my sister and then it was time to fix dinner (shell pasta, shrimp, Alfredo sauce and spinach - yum, I mixed mine altogether in a bowl). Yesterday and some today, I've worked on identifying photos that I brought back from Oregon. One brother wants to know: "Where are the old black and whites that were in the shoe box sorted per sibling?" I'd have to share too much drama for you to understand why that irks me. I'm so tempted to ignore his post, and probably will for a few days. My plan with these photos (I'm the one who sorted them) was/is to scan them - some were scanned at my dad's in Oregon when I was there - and put them on disk(s) to send to all the siblings along with "their" respective originals. I just hadn't bothered with it to this point. I have too many of those things I just haven't bothered with. Maybe I'll start getting to some of them this week. Maybe not.

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Did you think I'd given up on Toaster Oven Tuesday? I've thought about it. After all, it seems I can pretty much bake in my toaster oven anything one would bake in their regular oven; except a full-sized, stuffed turkey that is.We had an overnight guest this week and I made my meat loaf in the toaster oven. We had rough mashed red potatoes - peeled because they had been here for a few weeks and I didn't want any nasty surprises! I rounded the meal out with whole green beans, and then added this for dessert, and it needed to be baked. So into the oven it went.

I'd never tried Claim Jumper's Dutch Apple Pie. I was originally shopping for a peach pie because that has been the only flavor Nick likes, but the store had none, and this just looked good. I think I've been craving something sweet with that crumbly type of topping.

This is how it looked going into the oven...frozen, of course. After the first 35 minutes or so, I did have to put foil around the edges of the crust so that it didn't get too dark.

After 50-55 minutes, the crumble topping was added while leaving the foil in place, then baked for an additional 10 minutes.

This was the end result. Oh how scrumptious looking. You know, we ate it with Tillamook Vanilla Bean ice cream and didn't get a single picture of that! Not even of the leftovers over the next few days. This was a delicious pie. I will buy it again, but I sure wish pie didn't have calories!Oh, and Nick, he liked it too.